


still, a great deal of light falls on everything

by s0dafucker



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Platonic Relationships, idk what to tag this honestly, in which all the avatars said fuck u im gonna hang out w gerry, playing fast and loose w the canon timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23205637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0dafucker/pseuds/s0dafucker
Summary: i got so fucking romantic, i apologize- let me light your cigaretteshe’s molten inside, he can feel it. the eye is vicious, viscous, a malevolent static in his ears, but he shoves it aside in favor of watching her breathe, draw breath into lungs that aren’t quite lungs anymore./michael kisses him and it isn’t kissing, not really, not anything you could call kissing if you saw it-/‘i heard you beat the shit out of leitner,’ annabelle says.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Agnes Montague, Gerard Keay/Michael, gerard keay & annabelle cane, gerard keay & mike crew
Comments: 20
Kudos: 137





	still, a great deal of light falls on everything

**Author's Note:**

> title is from a letter vincent van gogh wrote to his brother theo + summary is from cute thing by car seat headrest

agnes murmurs, ‘here, let me,’ and leans over- her face goes gold underneath, campfire-flashlight, as she snaps and brings forth a little flame to kiss gently at gerry’s cigarette. he leans forward, tips its hat to her index finger, already wax-soft around the cuticles. she looks at his eyes and he draws breath, gets it lit. ‘thanks.’

she’s molten inside, he can feel it. the eye is vicious, viscous, a malevolent static in his ears, but he shoves it aside in favor of watching her breathe, draw breath into lungs that aren’t quite lungs anymore. maybe he should offer her a cigarette. (he Knows she would refuse, but when has that stopped him. stopped anyone.) 

something about prophets and martyrs, huh. something about patrons. agnes rests her chin on her palm, her hair straight and long and blazing, gerard’s dark as pitch, the plasticy black of cheap dye, the unnatural. agne’s eyes are glowing faintly but so are his, probably. he drags on his cigarette and his chest is tight, old binder aches, the faint twinge of his scars. agnes stares into him, past him, and isn’t that what it’s all about, huh. seeing and looking and burning and not speaking. old gods and old wounds and the remolding, the remaking, the ownership of a body. agnes whispers, ‘we shouldn’t,’ and gerard holds her hand that singes his and says, ‘and so we should.’

he kisses her knuckles and has a distant affection for the way it feels, more like molten metal than hot coffee. violence inherent. this isn’t love in the traditional sense. this isn’t friendship in a sense that matters at all, this isn’t anything- this shouldn’t. he passes her the cigarette and shuts his eyes, all of them, and she accepts. 

-

michael kisses him and it isn’t kissing, not really, not anything you could call kissing if you saw it, but gerry’s right in the eye of the storm and it feels like kissing. feels like a punch to the gut. he’s never been stabbed but fuck if it wouldn’t feel something like this, head spinning like being drunk, like vertigo. michael knows things that don’t exist and gerry Knows them with him and fuck if it doesn’t feel something like kissing. something like a freefall. something like a trip, like a dream, like a nightmare turned inside out. michael kisses him and the eye feels like it could be sobbing or choking or maybe just bitching. he tugs at gerard’s lip ring with his teeth. he bites down on his neck, over some inconsequential scar, and he laughs that horrible broken-glass laugh that makes gerry's heart skip _.  _

-

‘you know,’ he says, tapping a pack of cigarettes against his leg, ‘this could be a nice little, uh- a fuck you, to the web. free will and all that.’

‘i heard you beat the shit out of leitner,’ annabelle says. she doesn’t pretend it’s anything particularly tactful and he grins. 

‘got a light?’

her dress is sort of victorian and her eyes are sort of lovecraftian and she presses an old lighter into his hand and says, softly, ‘keep it.’

‘if he  _ was _ leitner- jury’s still out- god, he’s a pussy.’

she laughs. ‘you should’ve killed the bastard.’

the eye is  _ seething.  _ breathing down his fucking neck. he can See into annabelle’s skull and it’s making his skin crawl, making his joints ache. he just drags on his cigarette and lets it hurt. sinks into his bones. ‘i miss jane,’ he says, and he can feel annabelle’s sorrow- feigned or not- without the eye’s assistance. 

her hands are long and elegant and she braids his hair, with an understated sort of smirk when he presents her with his back- like he’s stupid to trust her, like they’re stupid to do this, and gerry doesn’t disagree.

-

mike breaks into his flat. gerry could’ve Known it, probably, if he’d been feeding the eye properly- but it’s not a horrible surprise. at least it wasn’t jude. 

he sits up in bed. ‘tea?’

‘it’s weird,’ mike says, later, when the kettle’s on. 

‘hm?’

‘you. without any of the-’ he gestures vaguely at gerry’s face. 

‘ah.’

‘yeah.’

god, he likes mike. no bullshit with mike. the kettle whistles and he thanks gerry for the tea and they go to the bedroom and watch shitty movies. the vast makes you so  _ fucking lonely,  _ mike mutters, scooting closer to gerry so static sparks where their arms are touching. 

-

the door to his bathroom doesn’t open to his bathroom anymore but it’s- it’s fine, because it’s warm and inviting and michael asks if it’s true that  _ elias goddamn bouchard  _ is in charge of the institute now, the kid from research he used to get high with in artifact storage- 

‘i haven’t been back to the institute in, like, a year,’ gerry says, against his mouth, and michael just presses closer, all-encompassing, and giggles, uproarious. 

there’s  _ love  _ in here, somewhere, gerry’s beholding it and he’s feeling it and he doesn’t know how much belongs to him and how much oozes outward from the corridor, how much is leaking from the spiral itself, just to boil the eye alive. (it doesn’t do well in here. it tends to weep.)

-

jude finds his tattoos ‘trashy, frankly,’ and ‘bordering on offensive,’- she asks if he’d mind her burning them off and he gives the wryest possible of grins when he admits they don’t quite work like that. 

(when she asks if he’ll help shave her head, he wonders if agnes put her up to it, but she just drags a kitchen chair into his bathroom- which is his bathroom again, he notices- and bangs it on every wall she can on the way.)

‘can i smoke in here?’ she asks, and doesn’t wait for a response. 

the buzz of the clippers has a grating sort of undertone, something sizzling and uncomfortable, but gerry’s long since gotten acquainted with discomfort. his chest aches, the tender meat of his heart- jude burns a hole into his countertop and the only thing slicing through the eye’s overwhelming Sense of wrongness is something quite like pride. 

(she dyes his hair, to pay him back, and she shows him her own  _ vastly superior  _ tattoos, her own dedication to her patron; she steals one of his mechs t-shirts and he won’t notice for weeks and when he does-)

she looks him right in the eyes with a knife-point clarity and says, ‘the lightless flame doesn’t like me being here,’ and he concedes that the ceaseless watcher isn’t a big fan of it either; she nods, fierce, and says, ‘let’s have a cigarette.’

(-he doesn’t mind in the slightest.)

-

‘how does it feel?’ he asks, and agnes says, ‘like the weight of the world pressing from the inside out.’

-

‘how does it feel?’ he asks, and annabelle turns her dark eyes on him and smiles in a way that could mean anything at all.

-

‘how does it feel?’ he asks, and mike leans back against him and murmurs, ‘like nothing, really.’

-

michael kisses him under his skin, up in some delicate part of his throat, something making up his voice, something important that screams to be felt with twelve different avenues of gerry’s mind- ‘how does that feel?’ michael asks, and gerry can’t think. he doesn’t know. he doesn’t Know. there’s a roaring in his ears that drowns out all else and it's not unwelcome.

**Author's Note:**

> i finished season 4 and instead of just. going to sleep. i stayed up listening to the mechs and writing this stupid little everybody lives at the same time fuckshit au
> 
> its 4 in the morning maybe this will be gone in 24 hours who knows


End file.
